Beyond what's in the pill bottle
By Kathryn Cardarelli and Scott Ransom
Special to the Star-Telegram
Why do some of us get sick more than others? The answer might not be what you think. It's more than bad genes and bad luck.
Americans seem to be obsessed with health, yet people on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder are getting sick more often and are dying sooner than their more affluent counterparts.
We all pay the price for it. America spends twice as much on healthcare as any other nation -- $2 trillion in 2005, an amount expected to double by 2016. We have the most advanced medical treatment and equipment available. So why aren't we the healthiest nation on the planet?
A new series on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) called Unnatural Causes profiles U.S. health inequalities related to race, social class and financial status. The series debuted Monday on KERA/Channel 13.
The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Tarrant County Public Health, the Fort Worth Public Health Department and Texas Christian University's Center for Civic Literacy strongly encourage the Fort Worth community to tune in to this presentation and are sponsoring a number of community events to highlight this series.
North Texas has world-class medical facilities, including two large academic medical centers -- the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the UNT Health Science Center -- and ample top-notch hospitals. Yet recent studies show that the number of African-American babies in Tarrant County who die in the first year of life -- 16.1 per 1,000 live births -- is comparable to that in Jordan and Malaysia. Where have we missed the mark?
Although health behaviors, genetics and access to healthcare all contribute to inequities in health, there is evidence that social circumstances -- where we are born, where we live, where we work -- can "get under the skin" to disrupt our health as certainly as any germ or virus.
Culture, political systems and the built environment (roads, available shopping, and other public amenities) all affect our health, as do working conditions, transportation, neighborhood safety and food availability.
Economic, housing and education opportunities can have as much impact on health as Medicaid policy or seat-belt laws. When social conditions are distributed unequally by class or race, population health mirrors that inequality.
In Tarrant County, African-Americans have higher death rates than Anglos and Latinos for heart disease, cancer, stroke, and intentional and unintentional injury. Plus, African-Americans have the highest levels of HIV, diabetes, stroke and tuberculosis.
Watch Unnatural Causes and get more information about Tarrant County's efforts to address health inequalities from the public discussions scheduled over the next couple of weeks. It could be a matter of life or death -- for our people and for our community.
TUNE IN: 'UNNATURAL CAUSES'
The UNT Health Science Center will offer a sampling of the four-part series.
When: 7 tonight
Where: Room 110, Gibson D. Lewis Library, 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth
Future episodes
KERA/Channel 13 plans to show the second and third installments of the series later this month.
10 p.m. April 21: "When the Bough Breaks" examines how race affects infant mortality, and "Becoming American" looks at how immigrants' health erodes as they assimilate.
10 p.m. April 28: "Bad Sugar" explores the links between poverty and diabetes, and "Place Matters" asks why your street address is a good predictor of health.
To learn more
For more on the series, go to www.unnaturalcauses.org/.
For more on Tarrant County's discussions about the series, go to http://health.tarrantcounty.com.
Kathryn Cardarelli is director of the Center for Community Health at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth. Dr. Scott Ransom is president of UNTHSC.